How To Protect Fuzhou's Historical And Cultural Heritage: A Case Study Of San-fang Qi-xiang (Three Lanes And Seven Alleys)

Located in the center of Fuzhou, capital of Fujian Province in southeastern China, San-fang Qi-xiang (Three Lanes and Seven Alleys), is China's only survived three-lane layout historical block which covers 440,000 square meters and boasts a long history of more than 1600 years. Its architectural ingeniousness has already earned itself the fame of"Museum of Classical Architectures of Ming Dynasty and Qing Dynasty". Such a glorify is further enhanced by the fact that it nursed as many as about 100 statespersons, stategists and writers such as Lin Zexu, Yan Fu and Xie Bingxin. San-fang Qi-xiang then is undoubtedly one of the best treasures of Fuzhou as a city with bountiful cultural heritage. Unfortunately, great yet unnecessary damages have happened to it in recent years'old-city-reconstructions. Stirred by these dismal happenings, this paper analyzes the mistakes made by Fuzhou Municipal government and their underlying reasons and, accordingly, puts forward some relevant countermeasures to better protect Fuzhou's historical and cultural heritage.Part One: Elaboration on the historical development and humanistic value of San-fang Qi-xiang, and the influence of its destruction on Fuzhou. San-fang Qi-xiang has been regarded as a magic weapon which takes the city by the citizens of Fuzhou since the world began, in which the essence of humanistic spirit of Fuzhou lies. Its destruction means the destruction of the most precious historic cultural inheritance of Fuzhou, and the beginning of the havoc, which brings about the decay of humanistic spirit of Fuzhou, the decline of the city cohesiveness, and affects the image of Fuzhou city and the development of the economic society.Part Two: Analysis on various mistakes made by Fuzhou Municipal Government in the process of San-fang Qi-xiang's destruction, and its reasons. It is hard for the local government to absolve itself from the blame for Qi-xiang's destruction, and its main mistakes are reflected by the five aspects: decision-making, programming, reconstruction of the old city, protection of the cultural relics, and stand of the government, the main reasons for which are distempered legal systems, deficient administrant systems, insufficient cognition and the low level of the city regulations.Part Three: Presentation of the countermeasures for protecting the historic cultural inheritance of Fuzhou. It first analyses the successful examples about domestic historic old cities and streets from which Fuzhou can draw lessons, and then puts forwards necessary measures to protect the historic cultural inheritance of Fuzhou according to the fact.